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1Notes on WST StructuredDocument
2-------------------------------
3
4Created:    2010/11/26
5References: WST 3.1.x, Eclipse 3.5 Galileo
6
7To manipulate XML documents in refactorings, we sometimes use the WST/SEE
8"StructuredDocument" API. There isn't exactly a lot of documentation on
9this out there, so this is a short explanation of how it works, totally
10based on _empirical_ evidence. As such, it must be taken with a grain of salt.
11
12Examples of usage can be found in
13  sdk/eclipse/plugins/com.android.ide.eclipse.adt/src/com/android/ide/eclipse/adt/internal/refactorings/
14
15
161- Get a document instance
17--------------------------
18
19To get a document from an existing IFile resource:
20
21    IModelManager modelMan = StructuredModelManager.getModelManager();
22    IStructuredDocument sdoc = modelMan.createStructuredDocumentFor(file);
23
24Note that the IStructuredDocument and all the associated interfaces we'll use
25below are all located in org.eclipse.wst.sse.core.internal.provisional,
26meaning they _might_ change later.
27
28Also note that this parses the content of the file on disk, not of a buffer
29with pending unsaved modifications opened in an editor.
30
31There is a counterpart for non-existent resources:
32
33    IModelManager.createNewStructuredDocumentFor(IFile)
34
35However our goal so far has been to _parse_ existing documents, find
36the place that we wanted to modify and then generate a TextFileChange
37for a refactoring operation. Consequently this document doesn't say
38anything about using this model to modify content directly.
39
40
412- Structured Document overview
42-------------------------------
43
44The IStructuredDocument is organized in "regions", which are little pieces
45of text.
46
47The document contains a list of region collections, each one being
48a list of regions. Each region has a type, as well as text.
49
50Since we use this to parse XML, let's look at this XML example:
51
52<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> \n
53<resource> \n
54    <color/>
55    <string name="my_string">Some Value</string>  <!-- comment -->\n
56</resource>
57
58
59This will result in the following regions and sub-regions:
60(all the constants below are located in DOMRegionContext)
61
62XML_PI_OPEN
63    XML_PI_OPEN:<?
64    XML_TAG_NAME:xml
65    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_NAME:version
66    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_EQUALS:=
67    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE:"1.0"
68    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_NAME:encoding
69    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_EQUALS:=
70    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE:"utf-8"
71    XML_PI_CLOSE:?>
72
73XML_CONTENT
74    XML_CONTENT:\n
75
76XML_TAG_NAME
77    XML_TAG_OPEN:<
78    XML_TAG_NAME:resources
79    XML_TAG_CLOSE:>
80
81XML_CONTENT
82    XML_CONTENT:\n + whitespace before color
83
84XML_TAG_NAME
85    XML_TAG_OPEN:<
86    XML_TAG_NAME:color
87    XML_EMPTY_TAG_CLOSE:/>
88
89XML_CONTENT
90    XML_CONTENT:\n + whitespace before string
91
92XML_TAG_NAME
93    XML_TAG_OPEN:<
94    XML_TAG_NAME:string
95    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_NAME:name
96    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_EQUALS:=
97    XML_TAG_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE:"my_string"
98    XML_TAG_CLOSE:>
99
100XML_CONTENT
101    XML_CONTENT:Some Value
102
103XML_TAG_NAME
104    XML_END_TAG_OPEN:</
105    XML_TAG_NAME:string
106    XML_TAG_CLOSE:>
107
108XML_CONTENT
109    XML_CONTENT: (2 spaces before the comment)
110
111XML_COMMENT_TEXT
112    XML_COMMENT_OPEN:<!--
113    XML_COMMENT_TEXT: comment
114    XML_COMMENT_CLOSE:--
115
116XML_CONTENT
117    XML_CONTENT: \n after comment
118
119XML_TAG_NAME
120    XML_END_TAG_OPEN:</
121    XML_TAG_NAME:resources
122    XML_TAG_CLOSE:>
123
124XML_CONTENT
125    XML_CONTENT:
126
127
1283- Iterating through regions
129----------------------------
130
131To iterate through all regions, we need to process the list of top-level regions and then
132iterate over inner regions:
133
134    for (IStructuredDocumentRegion regions : sdoc.getStructuredDocumentRegions()) {
135        // process inner regions
136        for (int i = 0; i < regions.getNumberOfRegions(); i++) {
137            ITextRegion region = regions.getRegions().get(i);
138            String type = region.getType();
139            String text = regions.getText(region);
140        }
141    }
142
143Each "region collection" basically matches one XML tag, with sub-regions for all the tokens
144inside a tag.
145
146Note that an XML_CONTENT region is actually the whitespace, was is known as a TEXT in the w3c DOM.
147
148Also note that each outer region has a type, but the inner regions also reuse a similar type.
149So for example an outer XML_TAG_NAME region collection is a proper XML tag, and it will contain
150an opening tag, a closing tag but also an XML_TAG_NAME that is the tag name itself.
151
152Surprisingly, the inner regions do not have many access methods we can use on them, except their
153type and start/length/end. There are two length and end methods:
154- getLength() and getEnd() take any whitespace into account.
155- getTextLength() and getTextEnd() exclude some typical trailing whitespace.
156
157Note that regarding the trailing whitespace, empirical evidence shows that in the XML case
158here, the only case where it matters is in a tag such as <string name="my_string">: for the
159XML_TAG_NAME region, getLength is 7 (string + space) and getTextLength is 6 (string, no space).
160Spacing between XML element is its own collapsed region.
161
162If you want the text of the inner region, you actually need to query it from the outer region.
163The outer IStructuredDocumentRegion (the region collection) contains lots more useful access
164methods, some of which return details on the inner regions:
165- getText     : without the whitespace.
166- getFullText : with the whitespace.
167- getStart / getLength / getEnd : type-dependent offset, including whitespace.
168- getStart / getTextLength / getTextEnd : type-dependent offset, excluding "irrelevant" whitespace.
169- getStartOffset / getEndOffset / getTextEndOffset : relative to document.
170
171Empirical evidence shows that there is no discernible difference between the getStart/getEnd
172values and those returned by getStartOffset/getEndOffset. Please abide by the javadoc.
173
174All offsets start at zero.
175
176Given a region collection, you can also browse regions either using a getRegions() list, or
177using getFirst/getLastRegion, or using getRegionAtCharacterOffset(). Iterating the region
178list seems the most useful scenario. There's no actual iterator provided for inner regions.
179
180There are a few other methods available in the regions classes. This was not an exhaustive list.
181
182
183----
184